As a result of this column you and your organization will: Understand what emotions motivate the customer to buy. Have customers wanting the products and services you offer. Have customers telling their friends how wonderful you are. According to the Marketing Science Institute, four out of every five new products or services fail or fall well short of forecasted profits within six months. The reason is that too many marketers don’t understand how their own and their consumers’ minds work. Purchasing a high-performance sports car is not just buying a device to take you from one place to another. In other words, organizations should understand that consumers’ survey responses often contradict what they really feel or do. Desiring to be perceived as health conscious, people may report on a survey or in a focus group that they do not consume much junk food and may give negative ratings to brands in that category. That may or may not be the truth.

• Purchases are often so tangled up in emotions of joy and guilt that the consumer may not even understand the truth at a conscious level.
• All they know is that the sight of the car or the smell of the chocolate triggers a desire to buy.

In the last 5 years, researchers have discovered more truths about the brain than they had revealed during the entire history of psychology and neuroscience. Historically, marketers have gained knowledge about consumer decision making through such means as telephone interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires.

Although this traditional market research formula relies on consciousness, rationality and economic logic, the researchers found that in consumers’ purchasing choices, 95 percent of the decision-making process takes place below the conscious level.

Research also shows that consumers are not always savvy shoppers who operate rationally.

• The difference between a product costing $10 and one costing $9.99 is a mere penny, but consumers treat it like a huge bargain.
• The typical consumer realizes that generic medications are as good as expensive national brands, but they often pay the higher price for the comfort of the brand name.

The unconscious mind clearly represents a significant frontier. We always knew you don’t experience a cake by sampling a sequence of its raw ingredients. You experience the fully baked cake.

One of the greatest product failures of all time was the sinking of the Titanic. Several disastrous assumptions were made including that the ship was unsinkable and was navigating in waters clear of icebergs.

What assumptions have you and your marketing people made about your customers’ submerged thoughts and feelings about your product or service? Is “The Titanic Effect” causing you to pour your marketing and advertising dollars into the ocean?

Questions for discussion:

What emotions do our customers experience when using our product or service and how can our marketing use the awareness of them and generate more business?

What mistaken assumptions have we and our marketing people made about our customers’ submerged thoughts and feelings regarding our product or service?

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